Beatty—The St. George 9 or Mummers', Plays. 309 
many separate works by various authors. To a few) of these 
I shall refer in the course of the discussion. For our pur¬ 
poses the most useful works are those of Dr. Washington 
Matthews/ J. Walter Fewkes, 1 2 Frank Hamilton Cushing, 3 
J. O. Dorsey, 4 and the work of Boas, previously referred to-. 
In all these works the mimetic nature of the ceremonies of 
these tribes is brought out very clearly, and the magic nature 
of their origin is almost as clear as in the case of those of the 
Australian. For instance, one of the best observers says: 
“When a man is dressed in his godly costume he does not 
speak, he only makes motions and utters a peculiar cry,—each 
god has his own special cry,—and he may perform acts on the 
patient with his special weapon or talisman. The masquer¬ 
ader, they say, is, for the time being, no longer a Havaho—but 
a god, and a prayer to him is a prayer to a god.” 5 
The same statement regarding the Zuhi is made by Cushing, 
who says that when the costume connected with the god is put 
on with the proper ceremonial, the actor in the drama-dance is 
the deity he presents, and is possessed of his powers : 6 “The 
Kaka, or sacred drama dance, is represented by a great variety 
of masks and costumes worn by Zuhi dancers during the per¬ 
formance of this remarkable dramatic ceremony. Undoubt¬ 
edly many of the traditional characters of the sacred drama 
thus represented are conventionalizations of the mythic con¬ 
ceptions or personifications of animal attributes. Therefore 
many of these characters partake of the characteristics, in ap¬ 
pearance as well as in other ways, of animals and men. 
It is believed that through the power of breath communicated 
by these ancient gods to men, from one man to another man, 
and thus from generation to generation, an actual connection 
has been kept up between initiated members of the Kaka 
1 “Navaho Legends,” 1897. 
2 “The Snake Ceremonials at Walpi.” 
3 “Zuhi Folk-Tales,” and articles in the Journal of American Folk- 
Lore. 
* In the publications' of the Field Columbian Museum. 
s Washington Matthews, “Navaho Legends,” p. 47, § 106. 
« F. H. Cushing, “Zuhi Folk-Tales,” pp. 229-230. 
